Angel Falls (Angel Falls Series, #1), Babette Jongh [books for 6 year olds to read themselves .TXT] 📗

him into her husband. I picked at a hangnail on the pinky finger that had never held onto a man for long, much less wrapped one. “Wow, Mel, you didn’t tell me you’d gotten a degree in psychology. Congratulations.”

“My Mrs. Degree qualifies me to psychologize, didn’t you know?” Mel laughed a birds-singing-in-the-trees laugh that climbed up my nerve endings.

But her high-pitched laugh wasn’t the problem. My rotten attitude was the problem. She might have stolen her Mrs. Degree from me, but the statute of limitations on that crime had long since expired. After keeping the title for twelve years, she’d earned the right to claim it. The dank smell of sour grapes in the air was coming from me. I had no right to sit in judgment on the quality of Mel’s sweetness.

“Why don’t you put in a CD?” Melody opened the center console and handed me a CD, since I’d failed to punt the conversational ball down the field.

I glanced at the title and put it back. “Don’t you have anything approaching real music?” I rifled through the country twang collection. “Nope,” I answered my own question. “You’ve gone over to the dark side.”

The headlights flashed on mile marker twenty three. We were half an hour from home. Much too long to listen to country music. I turned on the radio and dialed through bands of static. “Reception out here is pathetic.” I plugged my phone into the car’s USB port and scrolled through my Spotify playlist.

Melody made a strange choking sound. “My God!”

I looked up. Headlights pinned us through the windshield, first from one side of the road, then the other. A huge truck loomed in front of us. My lungs quit working. I dropped my phone and grabbed the dashboard. Those two yellow headlights expanded until they were all I could see. My heart raced and my insides buzzed with fear. We were going to die.

Melody screamed, slammed on brakes, and jerked the wheel.

The car skidded off the blacktop. The tires plowed through soft dirt then dug in, lifting the driver’s side off the ground. The car balanced on two wheels, and I had all the time in the world to contemplate our fate. We would roll down the embankment. Sink into the swamp with the water moccasins and alligators and flesh-eating-bacteria.

The car dropped to the blacktop with a whoomp, right in the path of the oncoming truck. Its bulldog hood ornament was close enough to—

The airbag exploded, burning my arms, punching me in the face. My bones smacked together. Glass spewed, pelting my skin. Smoke stung my eyes and clogged my throat. My head spun. No... we were spinning. Backward, screaming down the highway, a tin-can billiard ball hit with too much English. CDs and cell phones ricocheted like bullets; an umbrella whacked me in the forehead and whirled through the broken windshield.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

We hurtled down the embankment and rolled toward the black water below. The roof smashed into something and crumpled. Metal groaned then settled. The car rested on the driver’s side.

Movement stopped, time slowed.

I hung sideways, my chest and ribs smashed by the seatbelt, my heart going haywire. Arms and legs dangling, hair in my face, I coughed up the taste of smoke and blood and dirt and glass.

One by one, my senses came back online, but a foggy sense of unreality stood between me and my brain. The dashboard wavered like it was under water. Mel’s face was a pale blur below me.

“Melody?” My voice sounded hoarse. “Melody, are you all right?”

No answer. But I heard her breathing. Harsh rasping inhales, soft huffing exhales.

She was hurt. I had to help her. “Hang on, I’m coming.” I pressed my feet against the dash to keep from falling on top of her, and tried to unbuckle my seatbelt. But something stabbed my arm. I looked down, expecting to see a chunk of metal sticking out of my left bicep.

My arm looked fine, but when I moved it, pain blazed through me like fire. I felt lightheaded, and realized I was breathing too fast, a breath away from hyperventilating. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Muttering curse words didn’t help. Fucking fabulous. “Melody, I think my arm might be broken. I can’t get my seatbelt undone. Are you okay?”

Her gasping breaths had slowed. “It hurts to breathe.”

“You probably cracked a few ribs. But we’re still alive. We’ll be okay.”

“I can’t... I can’t breathe.” She was panting, short, shallow breaths. “Help me.”

Hanging sideways by the seatbelt, I felt myself spinning through a memory, springing hand to hand to foot to foot, cartwheeling through fifth grade with Mel’s hands at my waist. She taught me to cartwheel, and I rewrote her incoherent essay on Beowulf in high school. She dyed my hair orange—not on purpose—and I showed her how to wax her legs. Then she somehow managed to get her legs stuck together and ended up in the ER.

We had always helped each other, or tried to, at least. And I had allowed the one time she hurt me to cancel out all that helping. In a flash of gratitude-induced insight, I let go of my long-held resentment and promised God that from here on out, I’d be a for-real best friend to Melody. She couldn’t change our past, but I could change our future. “Are you hurt anywhere else? Can you climb up to the road?”

She didn’t answer. Her struggle for breath was all the answer I needed. I had to do something, but my brain was having a hard time coming up with a plan. My heart pounded in my head and behind my eyes. My chest hurt from hanging by the seatbelt. My throat felt dry from breathing in the smoke. My sinuses stung from the smell of gasoline—

Holy shit! What if the car caught fire?

I had to get us out of here.

I pushed my legs against the misshapen dash, curved my spine into the bucket seat, and locked my knees to get my weight off the seatbelt